Chalcogenide glass-ceramic with self-organized heterojunctions: Application to photovoltaic solar cells

Abstract

In this work, we present for the first time the concept of chalcogenide glass-ceramic for photovoltaic applications with the GeSe 2 Sb 2 Se 3 CuI system. It has been demonstrated that thin films, deposited with the sputtering technique, are amorphous and can be crystallized with appropriate heat treatment. The thin film glass-ceramic behaves as a p-type semiconductor, even if it contains p-type Cu 2 GeSe 3 and n-type Sb 2 Se 3 . The conductivity of Sb 2 Se 3 has been greatly improved by appropriate iodine doping. The first photovoltaic solar cells basedonthe association of iodine-doped Sb 2 Se 3 and the glass-ceramic thin films givea short-circuit current density J SC of 10mA/cm 2 and an open-circuit voltage V OC of 255 mV, with a power conversion efficiency of about 0.9%.